Electric Daisy Carnival Brighter with HES Beamage

Starting at sundown and running to sunup, the Electric Daisy Carnival in Las Vegas drew in 230,000 festival-goers for three nights of electronic music, carnival rides and interactive art installations. The June 24-26 event took place on the outskirts of town at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway, a 1,000-acre complex that was transformed by Insomniac Events into another world.

Production/Lighting Designer Stephen Lieberman specified 30 High End Systems intellaspots and 30 SHOWGUNs for the Circuit Grounds Stage - one of six stages. Lighting Director Patrick Dierson operated the lights on that stage.

The intellaspots were mounted to the main stage arch and framed the structure of the stage itself, providing an outline of the Circuit Ground Stage architecture.

The SHOWGUNs were mounted throughout the arches over the audience. There were six arches in total with each arch having a 70-foot peak and 220-foot width.

“The SHOWGUNs were a perfect unit for this application,” Dierson said. “Their sheer power was necessary to produce the throw needed at such a distance, particularly in an outdoor environment. They performed incredibly well, too. It was an awful environment to be in as a human much less as a machine, as daytime temperatures exceeded 110 degrees F and the audience area was covered in dusty desert gravel. You can imagine how much dust 50,000 dancers can kick up in that type of environment. After three days of constant physical beating, both the SHOWGUNs and intellaspots were still cranking away flawlessly.”

To High End Systems, the flawless performance was good news but not a surprise. The fixtures are built to withstand a multitude of concert conditions, including the physicality of touring and weather/temperature variations.

Dierson agreed, saying, “I was impressed but not surprised with the intellaspot's performance. It's exactly what I expected from High End Systems and the mind of Richard Belliveau. A phenomenal amount of output from a lower wattage lamp than I'm used to dealing with in festival environments made them beautiful to look at, while the brute force of their construction kept them running.”

Dierson admits that his programming is “not particularly gentle” at an electronic music festival, his most recent one before EDC being the Ultra Music Fest. “Steve Lieberman gave me an excellent canvas to work on, which put the intellaspots front and center in the stage design. The units were used in every cue and chase in the console, thus they did not see a break for a single live moment throughout the course of the weekend. The fixtures came through the end of it requiring the absolute minimal amount of rest. Beauty, brains and brawn...what more can you ask for in a light?”

AG Lighting was the overall lighting production contractor for EDC. They subcontracted the HES gear from Main Light Industries.